5 Votes
Susan Boyle as a Mask of Id
By now you have no doubt received an email forward from some parent, friend or colleague telling you how amazing Susan Boyle is as a singer. If not, she was the frumpy, older woman that appeared on Britain’s Got Talent who was laughed at and mocked by the audience and judges before belting out a rendition of I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables that subsequently wowed what seems to be everyone on the Internet.
Is she simply an example of herd behavior in which members of the audience and the watching community collectively scorn her by appearance in order to be like everyone else? I would imagine there are a number of experiences here where people have talents that are obscured by some external feature that triggers an incorrect first impression. Who is more likely to engage in herd behavior – the person trying to fit in or the average person without talent hoping to hide in the masses?
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I didn't think so.....after while by EyeOfSage
Time before revealing her talent:
When I was watching the show at the very start, the first time I saw her I said to myself: “She’s not going to make it….I hope they won’t be too mean to her”. Then after a while, I had the slightest suspicion that she will somehow astound everyone. That’s just because she seems so carefree and happy before she started to perform. Which made me realize that she must have something up her sleeves.
There was a girl in the audience who made a face that said: “Eww….I can’t believe she’s actually her with me in the same room”. And I thought to myself: “Wow….that girl in the audience is pretty, but her expression of disgust and her ugly personality made her attract only flies as do manures”.
Time after revealing her talent:
I thought to myself: “Wow…..I wish I was her”
Truly it is this experience that has made me realize how bad the humans are. We are so ugly inside yet we don’t even realize it until someone like Susan comes along and show us how conceited we all are.
Good, not great. by scottb
Is she simply an example of herd behavior in which members of the audience and the watching community collectively scorn her by appearance in order to be like everyone else?
I don’t think it’s as simple — or as insidious — as that.
TV and movies have made us a very visual culture. We’re used to seeing only attractive people on TV, especially those who are the focus of a performance. Even the “ugly” people are, at worst, average.
Consider “Ugly Betty”. America Ferarra, who plays the title character, is hardly an ugly woman. Even with the braces and “birth control” glasses her character wears, she’s not “ugly”.
But logic doesn’t really come naturally to us. We’re more often driven by hormones — chemicals that drive emotions. If you never see unattractive people performing well, it’s easy to fall into the mental trap of assuming that beauty and talent are correlated.
It goes the other way, too — everyone was surprised by Susan Boyle, and now they’re acting as if she’s one of the best singers in the world. I thought her “I Dreamed a Dream” performance was surprising — but go back and listen to it a couple of times, especially without the video. It’s workmanlike — not particularly passionate.
I suppose we could forgive that, as it was a live performance in front of a huge audience, and she’d never performed before even small audiences. But there are now other Susan Boyle recordings coming around. She did a cover of the famous Julie London track, “Cry Me a River” for a charity event. Recorded in a studio, before she was famous, with the opportunity to do multiple takes, and it’s still sounds like she was asked to sing at a tea party with the vicar in attendance.
That’s where the “herd” behavior is showing up, I think. Everybody likes an underdog, so when she surprised the Britain’s Got Talent audience, she got noticed. Now the herd is following the latest fad.
Call me a cynic, but I think she’s just getting her fifteen minutes. Good for her, but that’s all it is.
An Excuse. by gnifyus
I’ve never actually watched this particular show, but if it’s anything like American Idol, the audience is already pre-trained to scoff at a certain number of ‘crazies’ who either do ridiculous auditions just to be on T.V., or are truly delusional about their talent and are shown by the networks for the comic relief they provide. So I suspect, when Susan Boyle came out on stage the first thing everybody thought was, “Oh No, here’s another one”.
So, while it’s true she was initially judged on her looks, maybe there was a certain amount of bad expectation already instilled into the audience by the producers of the show.
As an aside, she’s already finding that fame has its drawbacks .